Handheld computing devices, such as cellular phones, have become extremely common. As the popularity of such devices has grown, their size has decreased while their complexity has increased. The result of this trend has made these devices increasingly difficult for elderly persons, children, persons with disabilities to configure and operate. Therefore, in emergency situations, such as a medical emergency, a person may not be able to operate the cell phone to obtain the assistance they require, or even if they manage to contact emergency services, many people may not be able to also inform friends, family, or others that they are in need of service. Moreover, in extreme medical emergencies, the person may not be able to provide emergency responders with adequate information, thereby possibly delaying the dispatch of proper assistance and increasing diagnosis time.
One aspect of cellular/handheld computing devices which has caused an increase in complexity of such devices is the growing set of applications and features provided via the middleware application installed on the device. Middleware applications run on top of the device's operating system and provide features that many users find very valuable. These applications often provide features such as wallpapers, ring tones, photo galleries, contact and address books, calendars, etc. Many of such features are provided by applications running over the middleware.
As the number of applications that the middleware supports grows, the complexity of configuring and using a handheld device grows, making the devices more difficult for elderly persons, children, persons with handicaps, etc. to use. Further complicating the issues involved for many people are the small buttons, font sizes, and other constraints of handheld devices. Moreover, applications presently available to run on middleware applications lack the ability to communicate with one another. Thus, for example, a contact database stored by a contact manager program in a present-day handheld cannot pass information to another applications installed on the device, such as email address, phone numbers, etc. This results in the repetitive input of data and may cause further inconvenience to many users.
Finally, present-day handheld devices do not offer the ability for those with medical conditions to share information remotely with healthcare professionals, nor do they provide users with the ability to configure their devices to contact multiple parties in the event of emergency. While some devices are equipped with a single-button option for dialing the “911” emergency service or a single contact (using “speed dial”), the art fails to provide a device in which a single button can be used to do such as things as request medical assistance, have that request sent to a person's personal physician, and also provide notification to friends or family members that assistance has been requested. Further, during the request for assistance there are no devices are which can provide vital signs information to the responder, or other real-time data that could be used to minimize diagnosis time during critical situations.